Libertarian VP Pick Weld: Rifles are “Weapons of Mass Destruction”

Revolt TV interviewed former U.S. Attorney, former Massachusetts governor and current Libertarian vice presidential candidate William Weld. Chief Political Correspondent Amrit Singh asked Weld about his views on guns. Specifically, whether or not people on the government’s secret, unaccountable Terrorist Watch List should be able to purchase “assault rifles.”

William Weld:

“The five shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle; the problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon, and those are independent criminal offenses. That is when they become, essentially a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns probably is even worse than the problem of the AR15.”

Amrit Singh:

“What can you do to help control this flow of guns, if anything?”

William Weld:

“You shouldn’t have anybody who is on the terrorist watch list buy any gun at all.”

As governor of Massachusetts when the gun control laws mentioned were implemented, Mr. Weld should know that MA doesn’t ban “clips.” It bans ammunition magazines — commonly called “magazines.”

Mr. Weld should know that Massachusetts’ magazine capacity law contains no provision regarding a magazine’s insertion into a rifle. Simple possession is illegal.

Mr. Weld should know the Bay State’s magazine capacity law prohibits possession [of post-1994 magazines] with a capacity of over 10 rounds, not five. (The law restricts shotguns with tube mags to five rounds of internal ammunition).

Weld also opined extensively on the recent police shooting of Philando Castile in Minnesota. He was certain that the police officer had committed a criminal offense and that the officer would be going to jail. He misquotes what Castile’s girlfreind said on video; then he claims that it was Philando himself who said it.

Weld: Having said “I have a license to carry, you do not mind if I reach for it, do you?”

As an attorney, Mr. Weld seems to have little regard for the rule of law, due process and the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Traditionally, Libertarians have been the party voicing the strongest support for Second Amendment-protected gun rights, and upholding the rule of law as defined by the Constitution. Not this time.

A liberal by any other name is still a liberal. I won’t be voting Libertarian this time around. And, by the way, Mr. Weld, the Constitution gives me and every other citizen the right to keep and bear weapons of war, including rifles. Go back to Massachusetts and take your mouth with you. I consider it to be a weapon of mass destruction.

This. So long as you keep looking to an amendable document and the latest political savior to give you what you want, you will lose it. They want you to follow the constitution and to vote, because then they have you in one. Did I hear snake oil salesman Trump supports Ryan? Libertarians acting like liberals. The only thing that will work is mass civil disobedience. Don’t participate. Don’t vote. Don’t give their system power and credence by paying attention to it. Start buying hobby lathes and mills and 3D printers. Anarchy is not what you think it is.

The new hip and trendy thing is to label yourself a small l “libertarian” or in this case, a big L “Libertarian” when in fact, all they are is “Liberaltarians.” They want the government off their back when it comes to their own lifestyle choices, but they have no problem with the government running roughshod over those people who do things with which they don’t personally endorse.

This is how you get idiots saying “Woohoo! Get the government out of the drug prohibition business! But ban guns and corporations!!1!”

Did you just sincerely conflate libertarianism, which very raison-d’être is small government as as little govt intervention as possible, with liberalism ; just because it happens to also begins with the letters “liber” and you happen to not personally like that either?

And did you just conflate William Weld – one person – with libertarianism at large – the sincere political stance of tens of millions of people?

Where do I even begin on how colossally retarded you are? Libertarians defend gun rights harder and better than any conservative – just because Weld happens to be a poor example doesn’t mean he accurately represents all libertarians.

He is the VP candidate on the Libertarian Party platform……… If that party still had any principles, he would be gone within 3 minutes of the above interview being made available to the rest of the party.

I absolutely agree with Josh. Sure, Trump is a narcissist, albeit not nearly as bad as Hillary. I don’t care about their egos, I care about border security, pro-freedom judge appointments, taking care of veterans, not paying millions to countries who hate us (or for ransom), and decent trade deals.

I hold the long-lived, consistent belief that people who don’t take the time to educate themselves about a subject, should probably not talk about said subject. You all groan and bitch when Democrats, the biggest demographic of gun-illiterates, introduce gun control measures, and wonder how hilariously stupid they can get. But it’s somehow okay to blabber bullshit like “durhur all libertarians want is more pot?” You’re an embarrassment to gun owners.

This guy is not a libertarian. He’s just a liberal. I don’t understand why Gary picked this guy. I voted for Gary last election. Not this time. Weld has no knowledge of which he flaps his gums about. What pin is he talking about that makes a gun a machine gun? He’s an idiot.

I hadn’t noticed Gary until the last year or so, but he hasn’t impressed me as being particularly Libertarian either. Was he dramatically better in 2012?

Now it looks like Hillary, Trump, and Johnson are competing to see who can piss off the most voters. I mean, when Hillary! went full retard on guns, and Trump appeared to have the nomination locked up, it looked like he could coast home to victory, if only he didn’t do something stupid, or something like Howard Dean’s “scream” that the media could make look stupid. So Trump had to come out and propose a watch list gun buying ban to keep himself from looking too much more pro-gun than Hillary.

Because Johnson is not a Libertarian. He has said that he closer to Bernie Sanders than anyone. What is it with people who don’t listen to what the candidate says and just attribute their own belief system to them.

Johnson hasn’t changed. Its his running mate that sucks. So that leads me to believe Gary isn’t who I thought he was. I vote libertarian when I don’t care one way or the other about the major party candidates. Ron Paul about 15 years ago got me thinking about libertarians.

I had no major problems with Obama’s first term and didn’t care for Mitt. I was wrong, as Obamas second term has been a disaster. My political views are all over the place and I like Bernie in someways.

This time I’m going for Trump only because of SCOTUS and I can’t stand Clinton. The only other politician I dislike as much as her is Dick Cheney.

Cheney as a politician, huh? What elected office did he ever run for/hold, besides VP which W bullied him into taking, which he immediately said he would never run for Prez, and he did not. Comparing him to Shrillary in the “politician” category, when she has been running constantly for 25 years, seems a bit silly. Meanwhile, Osama’s first term was a disaster as well, but well covered by misuse of several different departments, using DOJ and IRS as weapons against the truth, and depending on a variety of government officials, including Hillary the Whore, to help him lie about what happened at Benghazi, which we STILL don’t know the truth about, to keep the voter in the dark until it was too late..

This man is such an embarrassment to the libertarian movement I have no choice but to believe there is some backroom dealings involved in his appointment. I simply cannot fathom anyone who is actually an active libertarian supporting anything this man says.

Sadly, the national LP has swallowed the theory that unless they have “proven” candidates with “name recognition,” they’ll never win any elections. They’re probably right about that… but what they won’t be offering if they go down that road are actual “libertarian” candidates. They did it with Bob Barr before and p*d a lot of genuine Libertarians off (many of us just wrote in Ron Paul in the general and flipped them off), and they’re doing it again this year with backstabber Weld and the guy who thought backstabber Weld was a good running mate. What flummoxes me is that, unlike the other parties, the LP VP choice is not determined solely by the presidential candidate, he has to be independently nominated and approved by the convention… and these yutzes approved him anyway, despite Weld’s clear statist record in office. So, not this year, LP, not even a damn write-in.

Look, I get it. They sound good on paper, but so do a lot of other things. The mindset of “do whatever the f&ck you want! No rules! Spring break forever!” Is cute and all, but every time one of them actually gets down to brass tacks, they just end up being liberals under a different name. I see little difference between them and “feel the burn”, free college types.

Johnson did a decent job of running New Mexico when he was governor. Since then I’m not really sure what happened to the guy.

This VP pick isn’t going to sit well with Libertarians at all. More laws attempting to control uncontrollable behavior is exactly what the your average Libertarian is against. It seems to me that the Libertarian party has been the victim of a hostile takeover by disaffected lefties who are openly hostile to the entire concept of personal freedom which is the basis of Libertarian thought.

And yes, I generally consider myself to be a Libertarian but I have never voted for the party and it seems that trend will continue.

This is the most terrifying election in American history. We’ve got a guy who doesn’t actually want to win, we’ve got a woman who’s husband has set America’s technology advantage over China and Russia back 30 years and has flaunted rule of law for 50 years, a washed up GOP and a Prog, and a lady not qualified to lead a PTA meeting.

I like playing post apocalyptic video games, I don’t want to live them. God help us.

“The five shot rifle, that is a standard military rifle,
Maybe for the standard German Mauser in WWI, but even many of those had the “Over Capacity” “clips”.
I am still waiting for a Liberal politician to say that a Mauser 98K is a weapon of mass destruction and the over capacity 30 round clip can be emptied in a split second.

That’s because these Rothbardians expropriated the term in the 1980s. They are faux Libertarians who are left-wing extremists. Gary Johnson is not a real Libertarian. He is a Marxist with markets. Stop calling Libertarians. The proper term is anarcho-capitalists — Wobnlies for the middle class.

You are an idiot if you think rothbardians are left wing, the fact that you repeat this shit means you know nothing about libertarianism or Murry Rothbard, he was a right leaning anarchist if think he would have supported a Johnson/Weld ticket you are insane.

Personals eh? You are a FLAME DELETED. Rothbard rejected Libertarianism and anarchism cannot be on the right. The difference between Rothbard and Marx is that Marx believed that scarcity would end and with it the market. Rothbard did not believe this. Other than that there is no difference between Rothbard’s end state and Marx’s. Rothbard is a Marxist heretic like Karl Kautsky.

You can’t have markets without private property and you cannot have private property without legal protection. You cannot have legal protection for private property without goverment, it follows that private property does not exist without government to adjudicate property rights. Only a moron thinks anarchy can support a market economy.

You simply do not know what are talking about and are just mouthing something you read in a magazine.

Hayek never used the term Libertarian but the concept is simple. A Libertarian believes that the market is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources and government is there to provide public goods. It’s not drugs, gay sex and abortion.
The so- called Libertarian Party doesn’t believe public goods exist and the only rights that matter are drug rights, sex rights and abortion rights. Why do you think neither Johnson nor Weld care much about the Second Amendment or any other right round in the Bill of Rights.

The Austin Petersen faction fucked up by focusing on a wedge issue (abortion) and crashed his candidacy, leading to the “legalize it” faction driving the smoke-filled LP bus. I will probably still vote for Johnson but the bs he pulled at the convention when he pitched the gun Petersen offered him as a token of support has really left a bad taste in my mouth,

I was pretty pissed off when everybody got stuck on the abortion nonsense as well. The sooner everybody rids themselves of that albatross, the better we will all be.

The sooner these well-trained monkeys (like folks who claim Rothbard was a socialist) understand that the federal govt has assumed powers it wasn’t delegated and start demanding that said powers are given back to the states, the better off we will all be.

A libertarian wants ideally no government, which means freedom by default, but it also means ultimate responsibility because there’s not gonna be a net to catch you except the one you build with friends and family.

The Libertarian Party is now really just a refuge for failed Republicans and Democrats, where they can be a bigger fish in a small pond. Since Ron Paul went Republican, and then went pundit, the Libertarians have been filled with a bunch of LIBERTINES like Johnson, those that want moral debauchery coupled with no taxes – freedom from micromanagement or any responsibility with government still there to save people from their own bad decisions. So when libertarians say that they “take from both parties” realize that you are not talking to a libertarian.

In the last twentyish years, I have gone from Ditto-head to Libertarian to anarcho-capitalist, but these days I simply say that I am a government reductionist. Government can always do less, so right now I fight for a strict limit Jeffersonian interpretation of the constitution: repeal of the 16th and 17th Ammendments, ending the fed, ending the NFA34 and GCA68&Hughes Ammendment, ending the alphabet soup agencies, bringing America’s military back home to America’s shores, adding requirements to make voting something earned. If we ever get that I will begin to fight for the return to the Articles of Confederation. If we get that, then I’m sure there are a few articles that can be repealed, like fast-track membership for Canada(yes, that’s really one of the articles).

You are describing anarchy and actual Libertarians aren’t anarchists. Anarchy is not freedom. It is chaos with no institutions to uphold property rights. Without property rights liberty is not possible since property belongs to the strong who can take it by force. In 19th Century anarchist weren’t concerned about property rights since they were pure Marxists and private property was to be abolished. Johnson and faux Libertarian friends are nothing more than Marxist heretics.

This is our RINO ex-govenor who in his last year in office screwed all his Republican constitutes by making the 1994 AWB permanent in Massachusetts. He is hated beyond mention in Massachusetts. Untrustworthy POS. ?

With regard to that “5 round clip” that defines the standard military rifle, I think he was talking about a Mosin. That’s likely to be the limit of his knowledge and experience on the subject, and I’m afraid that it may also be the yardstick of his knowledge on other subjects, as well.

I’ve told you people time and again, that in my time & travels with the Libertarian Party in California during the 90’s, I learned that the LP doesn’t give anything more than lip service to gun rights/RKBA.

The LP is about three things: dope, buttsecks and tax evasion. That’s it. That’s their whole epistemology.

What’s real hilarious is that of course he’s not a real Libertarian – Weld is a shifty Republican turned Libertarian. Just like his former party, he’ll claim he defends 2A rights til he can sell them out.

You know, like all the Elephants in Red do.

But sure, the Red Hat wearin AWB supporter that wants to raise the minimum wage and get the government to provide universal health care will really be in your corner to protect those gun rights!

Buy ammo. The country is selling freedom cheap these days, and it’s getting very scarce.

Wow, you guys cherry picked the hell out of that interview. I guess the part where Weld said:
… the Orlando shooter, the guy was identified twice by the FBI and on the Terror Watch List, then the FBI took him off as he was not an active threat – that should never happen.
Weld’s solution? Go after terrorism like they went after the mafia.
1000 agents, working nothing but terrorism.
Guns? Guns are fine, if not in the hands of terrorists.
Rifles? How many are killed with an AR-15, compared to handguns.
Why are we talking rifles, if we talking annual body counts?

Trump?
Ha. Only when flirting for NY Governor, did Trump speak out against gun control, even then, weak tea:
“Yeah, I’m like all for the Second Amendment.”
Four decades of Trump projects in NY and NJ, and not word one against mandatory owner licenses, gun registration, ammo restrictions, and magazine bans.
Not a peep when the Dinkins Administration totally banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in the 5 boroughs.

His support of Second Amendment? Pre-Heller, pre-McDonald, National Guard is the militia, and well-regulated means a whole lotta laws. Great laws. Big laws. Really really awesome laws. Huge laws.

I have no idea why Gary Johnson chose him and won’t tell him to STFU. I was marginal about Johnson before, but now I think I will be writing in the “Incitatus” (extra points if you know where that is from without Googling).

This isn’t surprising. Traditionally, Libertarians have been the party voicing the strongest LIBERAL voices, outside of Democrats themselves.

Most libertarian party members are frauds. They’re frustrated former Republicans who just weren’t successful in that party. Some because of internal party politics, others because they’re actually very liberal people. They’re supposedly all for personal freedom, but they’re often against personal responsibility, preferring government to pay for and clean up their messes.

A lot of self-described libertarians have extremely liberal views. They just bristle at the liberal label. They aren’t anything of the “classical liberal” they pretend to be, in favor of free minds and free markets. They’re just too cool for school types who scoff at everyone else from the sidelines, but who long to be invited to the big government part so they too can impose their will on others.

He’s a Lib alright,….just not a Libertarian.
There shouldn’t be a “terrorist watch list”. If you are a citizen and have done something to get this distinction, you should be in jail awaiting your day in court. Conversely, if you are a foreigner, immediately deported to Gitmo.

This is how you pander to progressive Bernie supporters to try to get your national numbers up and get into the debates. You don’t seriously think Weld believes he will actually be the VP next year do you?

The cherry picked quote used here is fucking lunacy but the end goal isn’t the White House this cycle, it’s a seat at the table next cycle. Johnson’s camp picked Weld with that in mind and they’ve done a pretty remarkable job only letting him out on occasion so that he can dance whenever they need a few more peanuts.

The current LP marketing strategy downplays gun rights. The platform calls for honoring the 2A as it was written, but the marketing these days emphasizes marriage rights (no government involvement), drugs (do what you will, it’s your body) and taxation (as low as possible), all good things to be sure. But 2A takes a backseat in their marketing. It’s a lightning rod issue, even for Libertarians, who yes, tend to focus more on the marriage and drug issue than anything else.

I’ll bite, I’m registered LP and have never voted for a major party in either a presidential or gubernatorial election in my life. However, this year has me thinking based on the big picture. The base argument to people not sold on Donald is that he’ll figure it out, and that it’ll pave the way for someone better. Whereas with HRC, we have a battle on our hands.

That’s it, I’m certain; Johnson has been doing nothing this whole cycle but pander to Democrat voters, despite the fact Republicans are deeply divided & Sanders guys rapidly falling in line behind Hillary. Johnson clearly sees preventing her ascendency more important than promoting Libertarian ideals. He’s acting as a spoiler for Trump at this point (ironic since Trump is an unwitting/intentional spoiler for Hillary, but I guess Johnson’s is the only tactic available in such a scenario to defeat her)

If I had to speculate, I would say that the Libertarian Party is actively trying to not Ross Perot another Clinton into the whitehouse by splitting the Republican vote. Hence, they’re making themselves unpalatable to conservative and libertarian voters.

This is strange. When was the interview? These are his words from May this year “Today, almost 25 years later, I would make some different choices. Restricting Americans’ gun rights doesn’t make us safer, and threatens our constitutional freedoms. I was pleased by and support the Supreme Court’s decision in the District of Columbia vs. Heller — a decision that embraced the notion that our Second Amendment rights are individual rights, not to be abridged by the government.”

At the risk of runing afoul of the No True Scotsman fallacy. That guy is not a libertarian and neither is the Libertarian Party. They’ve turned their back on the first principles from which libertarianism is derived: Self ownership and non-aggression.

Johnson and Weld are just two mainstream Globalist Republicans pretending to be Libertarians. Weld sat on the board or The Council on Foreign Relations along with Heidi Cruz.. This news about Heidi Cruz sunk the Cruz campaign.. And if it gets around it will sink Johnson/Weld….As it should. And those that think that a VP has little input on policy, well you are mistaken. Just do your homework people. Americanism NOT Globalism. Globalism is the root of all of our problems in the USA and around the world..and they will not go away quietly